Just found a fix for this issue, but only when it is occurring under certain circumstances.
My game would give me this error and crash whenever I tried to open a program through Windows 7, wherein it would 'dim' the screen and give me a confirmation box, asking me whether or not I'd like to allow the program to "make changes" to my system.
If your game gives you the "unable to detect Directx device" error when your screen 'dims'-out like this, the fix is easy.

Control Panel > User Accounts (and Family Safety) > User Accounts > Change User Account Control Settings.
Once here, set it so that your screen doesn't dim whenever it asks for permission when opening programs.
This fixed my problem, but you could probably also go one step further and entirely disable this notification feature of Windows 7.
Just thought I'd chime in with my success on this front. Best of luck!